Here's one way bats might get their next…

Here's one way bats might get their next meal: by eavesdropping on flies having sex. Bats eat a lot of seemingly 1 flies. To find out how the winged mammals find the insects, researchers set up a video 2 inside a cowshed that was home to a bat colony and lots of bugs. The video showed that bats rely on their echolocation skills to detect flies at a specific time: when they're 3 in rather noisy sex. Flies are usually quiet in bat territory and sit on cluttered ceilings in caves where 4 noise masks the echoes from their movement. But when flies are feeling frisky, males can't help but flutter their wings, emitting a burst of click sounds that the bats pick up on. During more than one thousand sexual encounters caught in the act on video, five percent of the insects were 5 in the act by bats. The research is published in the journal Current Biology. The study shows that 6 can be safer than carnal knowledge when predators are on the prowl.